Why I’m killing the Facebook Page (and RSS feed)

Before you get all riled up, note that there’s a difference between a Facebook Profile and a Facebook Page. A Facebook Profile is what your friends have. You visit, you comment, you catch their updated statuses.

A Facebook Page, on the other hand, is a different beast.

Pages are usually created by companies or celebrities or, like in my case, bloggers. Pages allow a different kind of interaction. You can follow a page without really knowing the person behind it. And a page can have an unlimited number of fans, as opposed to the 5,000 friend limit for Profiles.

About a week after I started Marshallogue, I began posting updates to my Facebook Profile. My friends found it that way, along with my family.

About a month or so into it, I set up a Facebook Page specifically for the blog. I encouraged friends and family to join the page and get future updates that way, instead of crowding my Facebook Profile with daily posts.

After a while, though, I realized that no one but my mom reads the updates through the Facebook Page. I mean, every once in a while someone might stumble onto a post, but for the most part the page went dormant.

Instead, most people who really want to follow, except my mom again, sign up for email updates. That’s really the subscription I prefer.

Still, I’ve been offering both Facebook and email subscriptions for a while now, along with an RSS feed, which only matters now to people who already know what it’s all about.

Well, I’m making a change now. I’m paring down to just email.

Instead of offering a bunch of options for subscribing to Marshallogue, I want to offer just one: email. If you want to hear from me every day, I’ll send you a daily email. If not, no hard feelings. You can visit the site whenever you want on your own.

I think this move will do three things:

First, it will force those who want to pay attention even a little, to make a decision: either pay attention each day or just drop in to the site on your own, none of this “When I happen to see it on Facebook” stuff.

Second, with less options, I think it’ll actually lead to more subscriptions. I’m not really pursuing subscriptions full force right now, but maybe sometime down the road it will matter more.

Third, it’ll free me up to try an experiment I’ve been considering since the top of the year. Stay tuned for that (and by “stay tuned,” I mean subscribe by email). 🙂

If you happen to be one of the readers who follows through Facebook or RSS, please consider getting the email version. It’s free (forever). If that’s not your thing, though, I understand. Just visit whenever you like. I’ll be here.

Lastly, if you’re already signed up by email, thank you. It’s true what I say on the subscription page: I really do appreciate you more than you know.